Lee Child explains why Reacher jumped from first book to eleventh
Child spoke exclusively with RadioTimes.com to explain why season 2 is based on his 11th book in the Jack Reacher series, Bad Luck and Trouble.
The second season of Reacher has now started dropping new episodes on Prime Video, with Alan Ritchson reprising his role as Lee Child's book hero.
While season 1 was adapted from Child's first book in the series, season 2 jumps right ahead to book number 11, Bad Luck and Trouble, and Child spoke exclusively with RadioTimes.com to explain why this is the case.
"Well, for me as a writer, I was always very keen to make it possible for people to read the books in any order at all; none of them depend on any prior knowledge.
"Reacher as a character is interested in today only, [he] doesn't care about yesterday, doesn't care about tomorrow, so each book stands alone, which gave us the flexibility to really choose whatever book we wanted to use for any of the particular seasons.
"We also had to take into account that happily, as a lot of people read my books, which is great, we have to accept that not everybody reads my books, and we're hoping that the TV [show] will introduce a new audience."
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He continued: "Possibly there will be some overlap, of course, but there will be new viewers and hopefully a larger audience than books get.
"So we felt it was necessary to take those people into account, people that don't already know Reacher. So season 1 was very much an action season, it had a lot of mystery and a lot of tension and a lot of suspense and so on.
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"But it was also an introduction to Reacher. He was just out of the army, this was Reacher learning to live his new life, and we took the opportunity to show him as a person, his upbringing, his childhood, his family, you know.
"His mum was in it, his dad and his brother. We had flashbacks to them as children and we felt that introduced Reacher as a person.
"For season 2, we felt, let's find a book that introduces him professionally, what was the centre of gravity of his career, what kind of thing did he get up to in the military?
"And so we looked for a book where it really went into that detail, and as it happened it was the 11th book, so we jumped from book one to book 11.
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"That 11th book, Bad Luck and Trouble, was focused on his old unit, the elite MPs that he led, the 110th MP, the special investigators, that really was the meat of his service.
"So this second series explains his professional origins, and therefore we hope that the viewer, who perhaps didn't know Reacher yet, will now understand both aspects of his personality."
When speaking with RadioTimes.com, Child also expressed his belief that season 2 "actually turned out much better" than season 1 - colour us excited.
Reacher season 2 is now available on Amazon Prime Video. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what's on tonight.
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